Board of Zoning Appeals - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call the meeting of the Beaver Creek Board of Zoning Appeals to order. Madam Clerk, may we have the roll call, please?

Ms. Barhorst? Here. Mr. Rader? Here. Mr. Roach? Here. Ms. Vest? Here. Mr. Essman?

Here. Thank you. Can I get a motion to approve the agendas presented? Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion about the agenda? Not all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The agenda is approved. And I have a motion to approve the minutes of the July 8, 2026 meeting. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Any further discussion on the minutes? If not, all in favor of approving the minutes, say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. The ayes have it. The minutes have been approved. We have one public hearing tonight. It's public hearing V26-4, Lewis Martin. Madam Clerk?

This is case number V26-4 on an application filed by Jennifer Reynolds and Lewis Martin, 469 Ramsgate Drive, Dayton, Ohio four or five, four, three, zero requesting a variance from chapter one 58.1 0 5 a two of the city of Beaver Creek zoning code to allow a five foot high fence to be constructed within the 40 foot required front yard setback along north Emerald court. The property is located on the Northwest corner of north Emerald court and Ramsgate drive for the described as book three page six parcel one 89 on a green County property tax Atlas.

Thank you. Staff. Do we have a presentation?

THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR, BOARD MEMBERS.

YEAH, SO TONIGHT WE ARE DISCUSSING 469 RAMSGATE DRIVE. BASICALLY THE BOARD HEARD THIS CASE LAST MONTH, A SIMILAR CASE LAST MONTH FOR THE SAME PROPERTY. SO THE RAMSGATE DRIVE IS ON THE SOUTH END OF TOWN. WE CAN SHOW THIS DRIVE BY VIDEO AGAIN. You're watching a rerun. It's the same video from last month.

All right.

Hi there. Hello.

Okay, so basically this is looking north from Ramsgate down the side property line. This is looking west from North Emerald across the backyard. And then this is kind of looking more kind of a southwestern side, looking kind of south on the property of the backyard. You can see there's kind of a slope there. in the backyard and this is just another picture this is the basically the west side of the property basically as I mentioned the backyard is sloped there's a basically about an eight-foot fall from the from the kind of the back of the applicant had actually supplied this picture last time. And about a 58 foot span, there's about eight foot of fall, which is about 13.8 degree slope. percent slope going across the yard, which is considered kind of a moderate slope. I did a little bit of looking into it, and from the research I'd seen, there really is not a large, much of, really not a need for an increased height at a, for a moderate slope, especially at around 13%, 13, 14%. Oops. Um, and which is pretty average. That was looking at, I looked at some of the other areas in the backyard and that was pretty, that roughly 13 dish percent was a pretty consistent across the backyard there on that Western side. Um, basically this image here is basically the area that the applicant could put a four foot fence. Um, basically, I mean barring their driveway of course, but pretty much surrounding their property. We do allow forefront fences in the front yard. So they could basically incorporate their entire yard if they chose. But the applicant is requesting a five foot fence in the required front yard. So in this situation, basically since they front two different streets, Ramsgate and North Emerald. The applicant essentially has two front yards. And so the required front yard is that basically kind of like a building setback for houses and things. And the required front yard in an R1A zoning district is 40 feet. So in the rear of their yard, basically that red line basically indicates where that 40-foot setback would be. for their property. So basically, any fence that's greater than 48 inches would have to be outside of that red line. So I did look at some other properties. We kind of discussed this last month too. You know, their property, you know, being a corner lot on a short cul-de-sac is is a little bit different than a standard but it's not completely unique as far as having limited yard space when you take out you know the required front yard and here i have a couple other examples of corner lots that are kind of similar where you know there's a cul-de-sac and you know limited space in a backyard um and like i said i've got a few examples of corner lots that are, again, they're kind of similar to the applicants, you know, cul-de-sacs, short cul-de-sacs. So, and again, that red line is, you know, basically that front yard setback. I also gave an example of a triple frontage lot. Basically this property fronts three different streets and basically inside between those two red lines is basically the area where this person would be allowed to put a fence higher than 48 inches. And then I also did a double frontage, a couple examples of double frontage lots. Double frontage lots are unique in the standpoint, you can see basically the red line. In this particular case, basically this person fronts two streets, a street here and a street in the back. And essentially I have two front yards. That red line basically would be indicating where they could put a six foot fence or a fence higher than 48 inches, which basically would kind of be this area here. They couldn't extend beyond. So I think it was in 2023, basically, We changed our code to, we increased our fence height from 42 to 48 inches in the required front yard. And then we also allowed double frontage lots to encroach 20 feet or roughly 50% into that required front yard setback. to basically allow people with limited room in their backyard to have a little bit more space where they could put a fence higher than 48 inches. So that was a code change we made a few years ago. Here's another example of a corner lot. Here's a cul-de-sac. Here's the road behind it. Again, this person would have been limited to this line as far as if they wanted a fence higher than 48 inches. But with that code change, we allowed basically a fence higher than 48 inches to encroach 20 feet or that blue line in this case. So when looking at the applicant's property, I mean, we do understand it's not a typical corner lot. And so basically, after the last Board of Zoning Appeals meeting, the applicant came in on Thursday, the day after the meeting, and we talked about what would be, you know, to try to come up with a workable solution. Basically, in talking with the applicant, basically, my recommendation, you know, from a staff perspective, was to allow the applicant to encroach 20 feet into that 40-foot required front yard. That would give the applicant more space in their backyard, which is what they were looking for, but yet it maintained at least consistency with our code as it applied to double frontage lots. And so, you know, we thought that was, you know, a fair balance because it would give them more space. It basically be treating their yard slimmer to that of a double frontage yard. And so we, you know, basically offered that 20 foot encroachment Into the required front yard to accommodate we saw some benefits You know, it got them outside of their patio areas some concerns of last time was accessed through, you know Doors coming out of the house and all that and basically kind of opened that area up for them to utilize Their rear entry doors their patio things like that would all be encompassed encompassed within that, you know fenced area the applicant as I pointed out earlier, does have the ability to construct a 48 inch fence, a compliant fence. So they do have the ability to do that. But we do understand there is some uniqueness to this lot. And so we felt like that was a fair accommodation. What this also shows basically is this greenish line. What the applicant proposed to us that day was basically to encroach six feet or to encroach 34 feet into the required front yard, basically be six feet from the front property line on this side. And then as it came around the corner here, to increase it to 10. Again, we didn't necessarily find that really still does not meet the intent of our code and is really outside of what we worked hard to try to, our double frontage lots, we have some that are out of, Some of them are legal non-conforming, but we're trying to work to bring those into conformance. And that's where we found that 20 foot was a fair compromise to meet what our code allows for double frontage lots, but yet still give the applicants some space. But work towards our goal of trying to bring all these multi-frontage lots in compliance with the code. there were some concerns about the trees in this area I did go back and this is an aerial from 2003 the landscaping in this area I think it pretty much is still the same but the reason I wanted to show this was because it does a good job of showing basically where the existing trees are in relation to everything and so these bushes here have obviously grown, they've kind of grown together, but basically the fence at, say, a 20-foot encroachment would still be outside of the area of any trees for their property. So basically, we looked at the applicants. Again, what they're asking for is basically a six-foot encroachment or a 34-foot encroachment into that required front yard, and then basically where it curves down here, basically when it gets down to this end, basically a 10-foot. we met that day um you know the applicant proposed what they would like you know i proposed what the city would like to see and we kind of left on that i was supposed to at some point the applicant was going to contact me to go out and look at their property with them um and basically we didn't hear back until they submitted the remaining. We allowed the applicant to go ahead and apply that day because that Thursday, the day after the BZA meeting, is actually the cutoff day for this meeting. So we allowed the applicant to go ahead and make application without submitting any documentation. So we didn't hear back from the applicant until I reached out to them and they submitted basically what their request was gonna be a couple weeks ago. So basically, we looked at that. And again, the criteria one, can the property in question yield a reasonable return? And whether there can be any beneficial use of the property without a variance. Again, our position is the applicant certainly can yield a reasonable return from the property. and there is, you know, beneficial use of the property without a variance. The property has been used residentially since 1991 when it was built and, you know, there was never a fence there, so obviously, you know, it's been used for that purpose since it was developed. So, you know, we find that that criterion was not met. The second criteria was the variance substantial. You know, we feel that locating a five-foot fence within the required front yard and allowing a 34-foot encroachment into a 40-foot setback for a fence that's larger than 48, you know, we do feel that is substantial. You know, our height limitation applies to all multi-type front, all lots, including other, you know, corner lots, double frontage, and other multi-frontage lots. And, you know, we don't allow an encroachment more than 20 feet for any frontage, and that's limited to the double frontage law. So we do feel that would be substantial. Again, in 2023, we did raise the height of fences in the required front yard from 42 to 48 inches. And we allowed the 20-foot encroachment for double frontage lots. Again, that was the city's way of trying to help people, particularly with double frontage lots, to be able to access, utilize more of their rear yard. And again, we're willing to apply that same encroachment to the applicant's property, but they chose to... not go that direction. The slope of the yard is about 13.8%, which staff did not feel was warranted to really necessitate a taller fence. If anything, it would, you know, the fence is going to look potentially taller from, you know, the roadway and sidewalk anyway. So staff felt like that criterion was not met. Criterion three, would the character of the neighborhood alter, essentially be altered or joining property, suffer a detrimental harm or anything? And basically, ornamental fence is open in design and would, not be out of character with the neighborhood however there are no other corner lots in the in the neighborhood or even the surrounding area that would have a has a fence over 48 inches in the required front yard and so that that would you know the granting of the variance would create some inconsistencies and give opportunity for other similar requests which you know we feel like would you know cause you know detriment in the long term and we don't feel that criterion was met The fourth criterion, whether the variance would adversely affect the delivery of governmental services. We do not feel that the granting of the variance would negatively affect the delivery of governmental services. So we feel that that criterion was met. The fifth criterion, whether the property unit purchased the property with knowledge of the zoning restrictions when he or she purchased the property. The property was purchased by the applicant in 2024 and they stated in their documentation that they were excited to put up a fence for their dogs and children. Our zoning code is easily accessible online and in person. We get calls all the time from people saying, hey, I'm looking to buy in Beaver Creek. Can I do this or that? And we get those kind of questions all the time. There was plenty of opportunity to investigate any concerns, particularly with the uniqueness of that shape of that lot, if they had any concerns about fencing or anything like that, had opportunity. I can't speak to whether or not they directly knew, but they certainly had the opportunity to with the availability of the code and our online accesses and all that kind of stuff. We did not feel that criterion was met. whether the property owner's predicament can be feasibly solved with some other method other than a variance. Like we shared before at the last meeting, the applicant did have other options that they could use in conjunction or in lieu of a four-foot fence. They could use other technology, such as an invisible fence, whether wired or a GPS system, if they were concerned about their dogs, to keep their dogs in. They could establish a dog run in an area of the yard that they could allow the dogs to freely run in that was outside of the required front yard. They could use landscaping as a buffer to the fencing to keep the dogs back. dog training. You know, there are, while some of these other options may not be preferred remedies, they certainly are alternatives to the need for a variance. You know, they do have the ability to put in a 48-inch fence. You know, there's nothing unique about the property that's preventing that. So in that regard, the staff did not find that criterion was met. And then lastly, if the spirit and intent of the code requirement would be observed and substantial justice done by granting the variance. The intent of the zoning requirements is to maintain open streetscapes, visibility, aesthetic consistency throughout the city. The applicant's desire to use an ornamental fence, it does obviously more closely align with the intent for the spirit of the code, but certainly the height and location of the fence do not. And the applicant does have the ability to build a compliance fence without the requested 34-foot encroachment into the 40-foot required front yard setback. So given the magnitude of the request and the potential precedence that the granting of the variance would establish, staff doesn't feel the spirit intent behind the zoning requirement would be met or that substantial justice would be done by granting the variance. And in that regard, we did not feel that criterion was met. So basically, you know staff's position is pretty much the applicant does have the ability to build a compliant fence that we don't see anything unique about the property would prevent the applicant from building a compliant fence they can they certainly can do that their desire is to build a taller fence and when we certainly understand that and and again we you know we offered to support you know a 20-foot encroachment into that required front yard to try to accommodate that the applicant wasn't interested in doing that and proposed the 34-foot encroachment on the one side and tapering to a 30-foot encroachment on the east. But we feel that anything in excess of that would be outside of what is allowed. The biggest encroachment we have is a double frontage lot. And which is a 20 foot encroachment. Anything outside of that would be well outside of what we allow anywhere within the city. And just feel like that's a pretty large request to encroach 34 feet into that required front yard setback. And again, based upon our analysis, staff recommends denial of the applicant's variance request.

Thank you. At this point, I'd like to open the public hearing. Anyone that would like to come before us with this public hearing, please step forward. And as you approach the podium, if you'll kindly read what's in the upper left-hand corner. Oh, and of course give us your name and address. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

I get to start. Sure. All right. I'll start with the testimony up here. I'm Lewis Martin of 469 Ramsgate. Affirm that the testimony I'm about to give before the Board of Zoning Appeals of the City of Beaver Creek is the whole truth to the best of my knowledge.

Thank you.

All right. If you guys recall, last month we were here. I think we had a really good presentation last time. I think we got a really good presentation this time as well. Kind of like what Matt mentioned there is we did meet with them the following day, kind of asked what the chief concerns with our previous presentation was. And based off that feedback, we had a couple different layouts that we kind of talked about that day. And the chief concern was the maximum encroachment amount. So that's kind of what we tried to target for this one. Give us a little bit of a background. If you guys recall, things have recently changed, but our family moved to Beaver Creek from Columbus, summer of 2024, due to job relocation. We now have three children. We got six-year-old Ezekiel, almost two-year-old Andrew, and now six-day-old Margaret. Our oldest son, he's starting kindergarten, what is this?

Yeah, first grade on Friday. Yeah, goodness me.

We have two dogs, Kuma and Soba, if you see there in the top left picture. They're both American Akitas. They're kind of bigger dogs. They're both very lively, both very happy, good puppies. But they're pretty large and they can scale some pretty good sized things. We have some three foot or three and a half foot baby gates inside of our house, obviously for the children. And both dogs are pretty easily able to jump right over those on flat ground. They're running start needed. That's a little bit about us, though. My wife and I are both engineers. We work at a local aerospace manufacturing facility. Like I said, we've both moved here for work. We've loved it ever since. Beaver Creek's taken us in, and we've loved all of our neighbors, and that was one thing we thought of. This is our first house we bought. When we live in apartments, sometimes you'll not have a great apartment neighbors, and you get worried, like, hey, if I buy a house full-time, am I going to love all my neighbors full-time? And that's one of the biggest blessings, that every neighbor we've met and every neighbor we've been able to talk to has been so kind to us and so gracious, and Beaver Creek's been such an accommodating community for us. But that's a little bit about us. Moving on to the request, kind of give a review of the request from last month. Obviously it's a different one, but a lot of similarities here. It still would be a five-foot bronze ornamental fence. In our previous request, if you see here across the cul-de-sac and all the way to where it kind of straightens out here in North Emerald, it was going to be a two-foot setback, as would be allowed for a four-foot fence. So really this is a 12-inch height increase request. You can see here some of the numbers and metrics on it. It's 82 feet. I don't think it's listed there, but it's 92 feet from the west side of the house. Total linear feet of the fence will be about 330 feet. It will not cross any property lines. Last month we did get two out of three, or sorry, two, four, and then three against. So we were one vote shy of passing this variance request. But here we are with a new plan. I hope you guys... look at and see some of the changes we've made. We also want to talk about some of the uniqueness. That's been a key portion obviously for our property but also for any kind of variance request. I think the variance request process is really designed for properties such as ours where there is pretty substantial uniqueness or just alterations from the standard building configuration. kind of mocked up this image here to show a couple of things. This is obviously kind of a second frontage where North Emerald first joins in the street. And this is where we're considering a third frontage because this is where the bulb of the cul-de-sac kind of angles into our what I call rear yard or the back side of our house. And this is ‑‑ this purple portion here is just kind of a fun thought I was thinking of where ‑‑ potentially what our backyard would look like. If this was just a through street and there was no cul-de-sac here, this is what a theoretical property line could be. So this is kind of an encroachment from where that bulb is ending in the back of our house. So that being said, it's similar to like a triple frontage, kind of what Matt mentioned, is there are triple frontage lots. This is obviously zoned as a quarter lot, but you can see there was kind of three frontages here that we're dealing with, not just two and then that third there. Because of this, we obviously have that 40-foot setback that requires us to then terminate the fence basically right outside this kitchen window here, which would bisect our house pretty substantially. We obviously have Now three kids, we have two dogs. The chief concern for us is obviously to let our kids and dogs play safely and happily in the neighborhood, just as most other neighbors in our neighborhood have the ability to do. Without the variants, I guess I should kind of explain how we've been living life for these past two years since we moved here. Our two large dogs, we take them out about three or four times a day. But it's always on a leash. And as big dogs, they've got big legs. They like to stretch those legs once in a while. And as of the past two years, they've not really been able to do that. We go and walk around the neighborhood. We get to chat to people. But they never get to really have fun and play in a yard, which is obviously kind of a downside for them, a hardship for our dogs. And another part of that is we've not had a fence, so playing with our kids means we have to be very constant, you know, vigilance, making sure they're not going towards the street, making sure that, you know, nothing's coming into our yard. You know, we've got wildlife. Sometimes there's deer that run around. Sometimes there's foxes. So not only making sure our family stays in, but also make sure other things don't come into our property as well. I will mention, so Matt is right, there's a 13.8% grade if you cross this entire backyard and take an average of that. which 13.8 does not inherently sound too bad, but I will keep that number in mind, 13.8%, because in local spots across here, across this backyard, especially in this western, northwestern portion, it does peak up to 25% slope, which is a four foot, over a four foot run, there's a one foot drop, and even that 13.8%, I was looking for some building, I'm not a building guy, I'm not a, I don't know, create construction or anything like that. But I was looking at what is kind of a normal slope and grade for typical residential lots. And I found a few sources that were citing anything between basically three to six percent slope, it would be considered a normal residential slope amount for drainage, for a typical driveway maybe gets up to a 10% slope. Then they listed that anything over 10%, 10 to 20% would be considered a moderate grade, similar to what Matt had mentioned. So 13.8% does put in that moderate grade amount. However, that local 25% spots across this backyard where it does peak would be considered a steep incline. And that's what we listed on the several sources of billing codes and regulations. I just want to mention that because I think the 13% number across the entire average of the backyard, kind of diminishes the fear where we're having is where if our dog does jump over a spot where it is at 25%, they'd be easily able to clear a four foot pond. We went around to our neighborhood. We sent out letters and solicited feedback. We showed them our plan, showed them kind of the materials, what our layout would look like. We were asking, what do our neighbors, the people closest to us, feel about this plan? And out of all the respondents that you can see here, every single one of them was in favor of it. All the houses that don't have a check mark next to it did not respond. But we never heard any negative feedback. We didn't hear anything in terms of wanting to change the layout. So our house there in the blue, ALL THE GREEN CHECKMARKS ARE NEIGHBORS THAT POSITIVELY RESPONDED TO FEEDBACK THAT WE SOLICITED FROM THEM. JUST KIND OF SHOW YOU THE OVERALL CONSENSUS OF OUR MOST LOCAL NEIGHBORS. THEY'RE ALL IN FAVOR OF IT. WE'VE HAD A FEW OF THEM SEND E-MAILS. LAST MONTH WE HAD SOME NEIGHBORS SHOW UP IN PERSON TO THIS MEETING, IF YOU RECALL. SO OVERALL, THE COMMUNITY HAS BEEN VERY SUPPORTIVE OF IT, AND I'M GLAD TO HEAR IT, BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY WITH THEIR FEEDBACK, WE WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO CHANGE ANY KIND OF LAYOUTS, BUT THEY'VE BEEN OVERALL VERY HAPPY WITH IT, GIVING US, YOU KNOW, ALL THEIR GOOD GRACES Another great portion not to get off to track here. This is one of the really cool things about this process is we've been able to meet so many new neighbors. After sending out letters, kind of showing people who we are, what we like, what we're trying to do, we've gotten so much feedback from people soliciting us, like on our dog walks. They'll come out and say, hey, are you guys the ones requesting the fence? It looks like it's going to be great. We love it. And we've been able to meet so many new neighbors just in the past few months just because of that. So it's been kind of a cool experience. One of the nice things about this process is just being able to see all of our new neighbors that we haven't been able to quite meet in the past two years. And then on to the updated reference request, similar to what Matt mentioned. This is the new proposal. It would be starting off at six foot back as it kind of wraps around this radii here and the cul-de-sac and it would taper off to ten feet. And you might think, you know, where does he get six foot and where does he get ten foot as a number from? Six foot is the current setback for those bushes there. I know Matt had pulled up a picture from some time in the past when those bushes probably were a little bit smaller. But as of right now, they are six foot from the sidewalk. What we'd be willing to do is we'd kind of trim back those bushes a little bit to cut the fence through there. Obviously not removing the bush, but trimming back so the fence got a space. And then also, yeah, that's a good point to mention is the bush currently is about five foot tall, so it would be in line with the height of the fence. It wouldn't be, you know, any taller. So, yeah, they're definitely fully grown now. I'm not sure when they were planted, but obviously it was years ago. And then this 10-foot number, you might think, you know, where does this get a 10-foot number from? And if you look... how to describe this, normal to, or if you look kind of, yeah, if you're looking in line with the street here, there's three trees here at the corner, and two of those trees are 10 foot off the sidewalk. So pulling this fence to 10 foot would actually make it fall kind of nicely in line with those two existing trees. Just for additional kind of coverage and make it less visible, you know, kind of doing a little bit more there just to cover up the, what the fence looks like from the, from a person driving across the street or whatnot. Obviously, Still, with this plan, we don't cross any property lines. We still maintain the minimum sight lines for traffic and whatnot. And this compromise does triple the initial setback from what we were crossing here and then multiplies by five times across here. So we went from two feet to three feet and two feet to ten feet. So that's kind of the biggest portion that we're showing here. Summarize the comparison from last request to this request. Fence height and type is the same five foot ornamental, custom painted in bronze to match the rest of the neighborhood and kind of color scheme for the neighborhood in our house. Last time it was a two foot setback from the sidewalk and a two foot setback from the sidewalk across the, what I consider the straight portion of the street, to now six foot in the cul-de-sac to 10 feet on the straight portion of the street. This is also after we discussed two different kind of thought processes with staff the day after. We talked about a couple different things, and reducing the maximum encroachment was definitely the priority with our meeting. Justification for the variance. This is something that I thought was kind of curious. If you guys recall, Mr. Roach, you'd mentioned in our last meeting, you know, obviously this property is sold, so there is a usable function to this property. I think that was some feedback you had. And so I was curious. I wanted to know, because we heard some rumblings about our property from our neighbors, and one of our neighbors is actually a real estate agent, and they listed this house originally. And I wanted to see whether this property really did sell just as much as other Beaver Creek properties do. So I pulled some Beaver Creek data. And between 2023 to 2025, the average time on the market for housing in Beaver Creek was between 16 to 34 days. And that selling price for those houses was between 165 and 183 per square foot. And then list, they're selling for between 99.3 and 103% of their sale price. Our house, which I knew was there was some, I knew there was some, you know, numbers to this. I didn't really look into it until this meeting. Our house is on the market for a total of 281 days spread across a two year period being on and off the market. It ended up selling to us for about $137 per square foot, which is markedly less than the Beaver Creek average at the point, which ended up being a 66.1% ratio of sale price to list price. So you can see there, there's some numbers that kind of show that our house was considered an outlier for some reason. And I think we can all agree that it was probably due to the uniqueness of this lot. It didn't sell quite as the rest of the Beaver Creek houses do. So because of that, I would say the first criterion is probably met. I'd say the fact that our house did have a markedly different sales cycle than most other houses in Beaver Creek does demonstrate that the value of the house was diminished by the fact that the backyard is less usable. I think this gets rectified by the addition of a fence that kind of clears up the space and shows that not only ourselves, but if we do sell this house in the future, kind of reclaims that backyard and makes it into a functional backyard. whether the variance is substantial. This is a kind of question depending on who you ask, you're going to get two different answers. Our point of view is obviously going to be the variance is not very substantial. We're really requesting a 12 inch height increase, which if you think in the grand scheme of things, at least to me, does not sound like a huge request. If you view it through the lens of a five foot fence going through the front yard setback, you can throw the number 85% encroachment, that sounds much more substantial. I would like to view it just as, in terms of this is an additional 12 inches. And this is an additional 12 inches because, mostly, the slope in our yard, which is an average of 13%, but with high spots of 25% slope. That being said, a typical, yeah, typical backyard is allowed to be six foot in height. Obviously, since our yard is not very typical, we are limited at four foot, so that's why we're here for this variance request. Other backyards are allowed to have privacy fences and other sorts of materials, vinyls, woods, Kentucky three board and such like that. I think we've made a pretty good attempt to try to mitigate some of the issue with the extra 12 inches and some of those mitigations is the fact that we're willing to purchase a aluminum ornamental fence that's custom painted for the color of the neighborhood. Not only do we want this fence, but we're willing to incur additional cost and pick a preferable material to maintain some of the benefits of the code and kind of showing that we're working with you guys. And we want to make a fence that not only functions for us, but also looks good for the rest of the neighborhood. Impact neighbors. Like I said, the fence will sit between 6 to 10 feet off the sidewalk. Nobody's going to be able to reach the fence from the sidewalk with that. Nobody's going to be able to get in contact with it unless they were to obviously walk into our yard. The fence will be facing the cul-de-sac which has no through traffic. That's one thing I kind of wanted to mention is some of the comparison properties that were brought up by staff. There's a few things that are really unique about our property that are very different from the ones that are brought as comparisons. Many of which were through traffic which I think very much changes the kind of restriction or kind of the application of what a fence would look like. If you're running a crossover next to a through traffic or a main thoroughfare, it's obviously going to be very different than a cul-de-sac that terminates directly behind our house. It's obviously not boldly visible. We mentioned that it tapers out to 10-foot setback, and the reason for that was so it kind of hides that fence line behind those two large trees. And like we mentioned before, the surrounding neighbors are all in favor of the fence. Everybody's been giving us such good feedback, telling us they want to see us succeed and they want to see this fence cut right up. They've had a chance to meet our growing family, and they see the benefits to our family for this. And kind of going back to our point about our dogs, when we lived in Columbus, we lived in an apartment. Obviously, we did not fence in our apartment. And so what we would do is sometimes we'd take our dogs to the local dog park and we'd let them run free. Sadly, however, one of those trips ended pretty poorly. Like I said, our dogs are pretty large and they can be kind of intimidating, other dogs. However, they're big, gentle giants. However, one of the larger dogs did not take kindly to one of our dogs. and kind of attacked him unwarranted. He bit him so hard it went through his snout, through the top of his snout, into the roof of his mouth where he was bleeding profusely through his mouth. And another time he was kind of attacked by a dog and was trying to run away, slipped on some ice on the sidewalk and then tore his ACL. So since then he's had some vet visits and he has a titanium knee now. So he's a little bit scarred when it comes to meeting other dogs in dog parks. And there'd be no benefit to him if we tried taking him to a dog park, which is really one of the big things we thought about when we bought this house, was just trying to get him a nice free area to kind of run, stretch his legs out in a nice safe area. And that's another good point, is most dog parks that do exist in the area do not allow young children. So it would make it even more difficult for us to attempt that solution. Whether the essential character of the neighborhood would be substantially altered or whether adjoining properties would suffer a substantial detriment as a result of variance. We kind of talked about this last time, and there are a multitude of different fence types in the neighborhood. We have ones very similar to ours. In fact, there's a house that has, maybe not the exact same brand, but a very identical bronze aluminum five foot fence in our neighborhood. There is obviously wood, privacy, vinyl, all sorts of fencing. And that kind of goes with the tone of the neighborhood. The neighborhood was built in 1991 for the most part, and it kind of, that's kind of one of the reasons we loved moving to Beaver Creek. So we lived in Columbus. There was a lot of, there's very little variance and very little uniqueness to a lot of the houses where we came to Beaver Creek and we're looking through all these different neighborhoods and we just saw like what houses, you know, kind of look like in this era of the 90s and so where houses were kind of unique and people had architects and there's different floor plans and it just brings in a nice piece of like flavor to the neighborhood for lack of a better term. But that's one thing we love and that's what you see in our neighborhood and all the houses are really nicely kept, well maintained and they all look a little different, a little unique in their own right. Like I said, the essential character would not be changed. It maintains the openness. A five-foot ornamental aluminum fence is going to be much more open and kind of much more in line with the maintaining sight lines than many other four-foot approved fences would be. I can say even with the additional 12 inches of height added, these are AI generated images that kind of show you what the fence would potentially look like. This is obviously not perfect, but it's going to be a close approximation. Where even with a five foot fence, you're still, the top of the fence is not encroaching on the patio pad. So the entire house is still visible from the sidewalk. So it's not like we're covering anything up. It's not like you're going to reduce your sight lines or anything. It's not going to reduce the view of the neighborhood. It's obviously very similar. If you see this top picture, this is already conditionally approved. If we submitted this four foot fence, it would be approved today. This is what a five foot fence pushed back six feet from the sidewalk would potentially look like. Now I can try to figure out how to zoom in on this thing, but I don't think you can really see. If I just present these pictures to you very quickly, Somebody might say these are the exact same picture without closely analyzing it. And this kind of goes back also to the point of, is it substantial? I don't think so, because these two pictures that show the height difference are very, very similar. Whether the variance would adversely affect the governmental services, both the staff and I agreed there's no adverse effect to the delivery of governmental services. Whether the property owner purchased the property with knowledge of zoning restrictions in place or time, this comes down to what do we know at the moment. At the time we purchased the property, we're not aware of the following. The area functioning as our side yard second frontage will be classified as a required front yard subject to front yard height restrictions. And the area functioning as our backyard, the rear of our house, the third frontage that we kind of cited earlier will be classified as a required front yard as well. We purchased this house with the excitement of putting up a fence for both our dogs and our kids. We knew that we wanted a safe place to let them play. A big portion of why we want to move out of an apartment in Columbus and purchase a house here. was that a grown family could have a nice functional yard that, you know, kind of going with the theme of like the typical American dream, you know, you have your house and you get your kids and they can run around and kind of going with just a normal functional use of a backyard. However, based on the physical layout and ordinary use of the property, we understood this area to be a typical backyard. We were assuming that we had the right to use up to a six-foot height restriction because it was our backyard. We should also mention that, like we mentioned, this was during a job change for us. It was kind of an expedited move for us. We're very lucky that we found the house we did. We're very lucky we got it to move into Beaver Creek, but it was kind of expedited. In our research, we did find... the zoning guidelines. However, we saw that backyards were allowed to have up to six foot, and once I saw that, I assumed that was the end of the discussion, but I was obviously incorrect. Okay. Yeah, once we had our last meeting, we met back with Matt and had a discussion in terms of what would be preferable in terms of layout compromises. After that, we're trying to continue this experience, getting good feedback from obviously the board and also our neighbors and anyone in the neighborhoods willing to offer it. Whether the property owner's predicament feasibly can be obviated through some method other than a variance. We really talked about this part last time. And there is obviously many, many things that we could potentially attempt to do. And we've mentioned things that we've already tried to do that kind of line up with what staff had mentioned. We could attempt to use a four-foot fence. That's already approved. It would be the easiest way. It would be cheaper. It would be easier. Everybody would be happy, right? I don't think that would work. Like I said, our dogs in our house currently jump over three-foot baby gates flat-footed. No running start, no momentum, just hopping over. Like I mentioned, those localized spot where there's a 25-foot grade would essentially make a four-foot fence, going downwards in the slope, a three-foot fence. If they have a four-foot run-up, which our large dogs would very be able to do, that removes a foot of height from the fence, essentially making it the same height as one of our baby geese inside the house. The lot layout does not provide another comparable area where the code-compliant fence of sufficient height could be installed to create a safe and closed yard. We did talk about some of that, like 50% encroachment allowance. However, that would terminate most likely into our patio, still cutting off a portion of our house, kind of bisecting our house there, as well as requiring us to cut down some bushes and trees that I think all of our neighbors kind of agreed that they'd prefer to keep there and mentioned that they'd much rather have the fence in this layout than it would be to change any landscaping in our backyard. Not installing a fence, relying on leashes as we've been doing. We've been using our leashes and we've been able to take dogs on a walk, but we still reasonably cannot use our backyard in the way that typical backyards are used. We cannot let our kids run out free. We've got to maintain them. We've got to obviously watch them pretty carefully. Obviously with our newest born, that becomes much more difficult. If our dog were to run into the street, maybe in front of a car, or if they're chasing after a squirrel or so, it'd be extremely difficult for myself or my wife to now try to catch them or prevent that from happening now that we have obviously the three kids. Installing an invisible fence. That was one that we really attempted to try. We really pushed a hard effort on this one. We have an e-collar, the same kind of mechanism that triggers a dog to prevent it from running out. And we did not get a very good success rate on that. We were able to use it, and at a certain rate, I wasn't taking a percentage, but I'd say probably two-thirds of the time it would work exactly as intended. Two-thirds of the time, The dog would stop, he would not progress any further, he would not attempt to go after what they were looking for. But that 33% failure rate was obviously not very comforting for us. If our dog is destined to run and chase a rabbit or squirrel or a new thing we've noticed this summer is my one dog loves e-bikes. So as they're running up and down the neighborhoods, he really, really wants to try one of those e-bikes. So if he were to get excited enough about one of those, I don't think an invisible fence is going to do anything but to stop him. Especially if it comes to something that's a prey drive. If you guys are familiar with larger dogs, some of them have prey drives where if they see a squirrel, rabbit, whatever it might be, there's a portion of them that just clicks into auto drive and they want to get that small animal. And even if that e-caller device is working properly, it is likely not to actually prevent them. It'll be something in the back of their mind that they don't really care about. And we do have some anecdotes from our neighbors that talk about this, where one of our neighbors walks across the neighborhood, they do walk through the city quite a lot, or I should say the neighborhood quite a lot, and they were walking by a house that had a large German shepherd, and it was barking at them, but there was an invisible fence, and they had the e-collar on, and they were behind the fence, but they were still barking at this person. Every time they would get close to where the invisible fence line was, though, they'd get the electric shock. And what would happen is that dog hit the electric shock time, I think three or four times I mentioned, before it decided, hey, whatever this is in front of me is causing this pain, and then attacked our neighbor and actually bit her so badly, sent her to the ER and the hospital. So when I see the idea of an invisible fence, maybe it works for some breeds, maybe it works for some breeds that don't have a high prey drive or don't have the pain tolerance or the adrenaline. that our kind of dogs do. When I see things like that, there's no way this is 100% reliable. The only 100% reliable solution to keeping these dogs in the yard would be the five foot fence. Anything else would be a lower percentage success rate.

Yeah, yeah.

I, Jennifer Reynolds, affirm that the testimony that I am about to give before the Board of Zoning Appeals of the City of Beaver Creek is the whole truth to the best of my knowledge. So I think, based off of my husband's explanation here, that we need a five foot fence for our dogs. There's not an alternative option. Where this variance comes in is where we put the five foot fence, right? And based off of our last variance request, the feedback was to work with zoning to come up with a compromise and what we're saying here and what we discussed during our last variance meeting was that the 50% encroachment also does not work for our backyard because of our fully grown bushes which I guess you know if you look from 20 years ago it's small and it's bush but it is it's very large now five to six feet tall they're very wide 10 to 20 feet wide with all of them so we would be changing our landscape on top of that where the 50% encroachment lies is about on the steepest portion of our yard so you could put it in that 50% encroachment 20 feet up you look back through the pictures that's where the steepest part of our hill is so you could put it there but it's it's not very helpful and on top of that I believe it does also intersect with maybe a corner of our patio which is we also would prefer not to remove that and also it's very close to our house at that point so still very little room to run and still bisecting our yard which is why we wanted to work with the staff on a compromise right something between the 50% and what we recommended at our last variance and why we've come up with the six feet and the ten feet So I just wanted to mention that and you know again for our dogs a four foot fence is not acceptable so we have to find a valuable option at that five foot fence location.

Yeah and that's kind of going back to the point of like when you want to protect dogs from getting out or you want to protect things from getting in you want to have a 100% success rate like None of us would be okay with our dogs being, you know, hey, we're going to put up a fence that's going to be 50% reliable. Nobody's going to want that solution. Not only is it unsafe for the dogs, it's unsafe for any cars driving by if they were to run over our dogs or any other smaller pets that might approach into our yard. So we're really looking for 100% success rate when it comes to the function of this fence, obviously. Kind of talking about, yeah, if you see here that 58-foot span that goes essentially from one side of our backyard all the way to here, the average is 13.8%. However, there are local spots. If you see the topographical lines get closer and narrower there, there's going to be spots where it does tighten up to 25%. These numbers here for reference were I got from builders that mentioned kind of what I mentioned earlier. But anything less than 10% would be considered a gentle slope. 10 to 15 is a moderate slope. And then 15 to 25% was considered a steep incline. And like I said, if you can see here, you can even just see on this image that we pulled up here. the amount of slope that we have. So this is obviously a walkout basement here, and there's enough slope there where we have our first floor there, and not very far from it right there, that's the floor of our basement. So it drops an entire floor story just in that portion right there. But to kind of show another uniqueness of our lot, not just the shape, but also the gradient and the slope associated with it. This one, hold with me here, there's a lot of colors in the slide. I think it's a good image to show exactly kind of what we were talking about. This red portion here is what would be considered like already approved for a fence taller than 48 inches. However, what we mentioned before is there is an AC unit here. There are, there's a transformer like an above ground transformer unit that sticks up in here as well as an AT&T fiber optic above ground unit as well as obviously all the landscaping that we kind of showed here. So this would be automatically approved for anything over 48 inches. The 50% encroachment We then also cut into these trees here and also kind of cut that patio in half as well as kind of showing obviously what we talked about earlier with a theoretical property line if that cul-de-sac did not terminate in our backyard. This is also, I kind of want to mention this because At the last meeting, I can't recall who it was, but they mentioned if we were to build a pool, and obviously in Beaver Creek you're allowed to build pools, it would be a requirement that you have a five-foot fence. A five-foot fence would be an absolute minimum you're allowed to have. So kind of going back to that, it's like not only five-foot fences are normal in Beaver Creek, but certain circumstances it's it's mandatorily required so obviously we're not building a pool right now but and we're not planning on building a pool at least any time in the near future but it does kind of show consistent with just other guidelines that Beaver Creek requires of its residents if we wanted to build a pool and we didn't have a five offensive be in violation

I wish I would have calculated it, but as you can see from the picture, the 50% encroachment truly does not add much additional space to our usable backyard. Even with it going through our fully grown bushes and potentially the corner of our patio, It doesn't add much additional space for our dogs and children to run. And like I said on the previous slide, that 50% encroachment orange region is the steepest area of our yard. So yes, we would be adding additional yard to where we could fence it in, but it would be the steepest part of our yard. which obviously would make it more usable to be able to fence it in. But still, we would prefer to be able to have more of that yard space to be able to use it.

Yeah, that kind of touched on the usability of the yard. As this is fenced in, there's absolutely no function in this yard. Even with the 15% encroachment, our yard space is not usable for anything that we're attempting to do here. That's kind of what we're talking about, is that we're asking to do what would be considered automatically approved for a four-foot fence. But due to the shape and the slope of our lot, we're just asking for that extra 12 inches of height. Some comparable properties. We had this slide up at the last meeting as well. These are all the cul-de-sacs that are in our neighborhood. Um, and as you can see here, this is our house here. Ours is the only house where the rear of the yard is pointing into the cul de sac. If you look here, we've got Terry Court. Staff mentioned that. We also brought it up here as well. They're the most similar in which they have kind of a back and side yard that run parallel to their cul-de-sac street. But nobody is, their backyard is facing into the street like ours is. Just another bit of uniqueness there. So not only, I keep talking about the slope and gradient, but this layout is just very, very unique. And we didn't realize how unique it was until we started looking at every single property that we could. Let's see here. These are some properties that staff mentioned as comparable properties or they showed them as corner lots or double frontage or even triple frontages. And I wanted to look at them and see how similar they are to ours. And what I found is pretty consistent is that none of them had any grade that was above 3%. Not a single one of them had a grade above 3%. Every single one of them had less than two feet of slope between the main primary structure of the house to kind of the edge of their sidewalk. Which really, really, even with the average number of 13.8%, even with the softest sounding number that staff have mentioned, that is still 10% higher than any of these comparable properties. So if there is any fear of precedence being set, I'd say one of those things you have to accommodate is the fact that these don't have any grade. These are essentially flat properties. They do not have the same issues that we have. If we had a completely flat property, we would be perfectly happy with a four-foot fence, just as these people might be. Let's see here. I don't know if you wanted to mention anything. Yeah.

also mention that the way that each of these houses are on their properties they'd be able to put a taller backyard fence along where they would have any backyard exit doors right without getting a variance request we require that variance in order to even be able to fence in our back doors exiting the back of our house all of these you'd be able to fence in those doors

Yeah, that's true. One of the things I saw, and maybe staff could correct me if I'm wrong here, but one thing I saw was that even if you do have a portion of your property that encroaches on that 40-foot required setback, if your primary structure isn't in that same encroachment, you could have a fence that follows that same encroachment amount. Let's say your house is 30 feet from the sidewalk. You could have a fence that runs parallel to that street and maintains that same 30-foot. That setback is the primary structure. These, all these houses have the ability to do similar to that. I don't have the lines but even this house specifically a triple frontage which is obviously a very unique property. They would be able to fence in this entire back portion of their house, which is encompassing all of their back doors, the rear exit doors of their house, and does give them a pretty reasonable room to have a yard. Ours is the one where, obviously, we do not have that option. And actually, if you did the 50% encroachment, they'd be able to fence out. That's not true? So at least they'd still be able to fence in along this primary structure back to this property line here and have this usable space. And it's obviously flat, so even if they wanted to use a four foot fence or a five foot or six foot fence, that'd still be much more functional than what we're asking for.

And we bring all of this up to say that our property is unique, right? We have a big slope in our backyard. We have a cul-de-sac that encroaches into our backyard. And I know one of the biggest worries I think here is setting precedence and trying to state here why we wouldn't be setting precedence for everyone to come make this same request. We're trying to say, hey, lot is very unique we have a very unique backyard we want to be able to use our backyard and this is why so that's why we bring up all of these other house comparisons as well to say these really aren't like ours either all of these houses that are shown have options they have flat topography as you can see the one option it's big enough to have a pool and it does have a six-foot fence on it so that's kind of our point in the uniqueness to our lot

Yeah, I think if you kind of break it down into all the unique factors, it's the layout, the fact that we have a short cul-de-sac. Not just terminates, but terminates angling into our backyard. It's not through traffic. This is not like how some of these, you know, this double frontage or triple frontage here. These are through streets where people could be actually driving by. our cul-de-sac is not through traffic, and then obviously the slope on top of that. So it's a unique shape to the cul-de-sac, it's the excessive amount of slope, and then it's also the fact there's a lack of a through traffic Whether the spirit and the intent behind the zoning requirement would be observed and if substantial justice would be done by granting the variance. Like we mentioned, the ornamental fence preserves openness of the neighborhood. We're picking a fence type that really tries to make as minimal, reduce the, tries to minimize the visibility of the fence as much as we can. And we're paying a premium for that. We got quotes for vinyl fences, wood fences, and then obviously aluminum fences. And the aluminum fence was by far the most expensive option. But we offer this knowing that this is doing the best job to maintain the openness and feel of the existing Beaver Creek communities. We're not asking for anything egregious. We're not even pushing up to the six foot limit. We're not asking for anything above the minimum viable option for us. We're just asking for the additional 12 inches of height that would guarantee that our dogs cannot escape through our backyard. This obviously is going to be protecting the neighborhood, the children, pet safety, in line with how most Beaver Creek communities and neighborhoods are. This is a family town, there's pets, there's kids, there's multi-generational families and whatnot. This is very, very much so in the spirit and intent of how I think Beaver Creek is meant to be laid out. Very family friendly, very open, very nice, well put together neighborhoods and I think this is exactly enough. I think what we're presenting here is an exact representation of what the spirit intent is meant to do, and then also the experiences to accommodate the uniqueness of our life. So to go through the list, we're not going to talk about these too much because we just talked about them for however long that was, but whether the property in question will yield a reasonable return or whether they can have any beneficial use. We kind of talked about that. It's a unique shape. As of right now, we do not get to functionally use a backyard. Most people, if they were living in our house, they would not be able to get to use our backyard as they typically would. And then kind of the sales value. Like I said, we were 1,200% longer on market for the house that we bought. And we purchased it for about 33% lower list to sale price ratio than most Beaver Creek's homes do sell for. Whether this variance is substantial, this is realistically a 12-inch height increase. I think every image we showed really displayed the fact that this is a very, very minimal increase. The visual impact of this additional 12 inches on our type of fence would be much less than a four-foot solid panel fence. Whether the essential character of the neighborhood would be substantially altered, I don't think so. If you were to go around the neighborhood, and we have many times, we do a morning and a nightly walk across the entire neighborhood, and there's aluminum fences, all sorts of fence material types, all sorts of kind of constructions and styling homes. This is very much in line with exactly how the rest of the neighborhood looks. It does not affect any government services. We did not know about the very specific requirements about the required front yard when we purchased this house. We found some info that said you could have a six-foot fence in your backyard. And once we heard that, we were under the assumption that was allowed for us. whether the property owner's predicament can be feasibly obviated. Like we mentioned, I would prefer if we could obviate it through any other method. If I could find invisible fences that worked 100% of the time, that'd be much easier, much cheaper for us. If we could just simply do jog training, make sure that's 100% reliable. That'd be much cheaper for this. The option we've offered here is probably one of the most expensive options. And I really want to hammer that home that this is to show that we are very, very willing to accommodate the preference of the city, and preference of the staff, and preference of, obviously, the neighborhood and the city of Beaver Creek for what we're trying to do here. We're trying to make as minimal impact as possible. And we're willing to pay a little additional for that.

I just want to say how huge of an impact this would have on my life. I have three children and two very large dogs. My husband is going to go back to work soon. I'll be on maternity leave. To be able to sit outside and enjoy my yard with my dogs and my kids means everything to me. That's why I wanted a house. And I know we can have a four foot fence and I feel like we've said it and said it again why the five-foot fence is really required for our dogs because they are huge we don't want any safety concerns I can't even imagine trying to run after my dogs because they jumped a four-foot fence with a newborn and a two-year-old I don't know how to drive it home, but this is so important for me and my family because without it, I don't enjoy my backyard. I can't let my kids run outside. My two year old, every time we go out in our backyard, he runs into the cul-de-sac, which then goes to Ramsgate, which is a very busy road. So I can't even sit and enjoy my backyard with my two year old right now. So I really am trying to drive home how much of a positive impact this would have on me and my family. And does that outweigh

the fact that it is a variance from standard in beaver creek based off of the very uniqueness of our yard so i just i want you to consider that maybe i maybe i don't sell as well maybe i'm kind of black and white when i talk about these things but this would be such a huge benefit for our family obviously not just for our family i think one thing you got to think about is is our dogs i don't know if anyone here is a dog person or they've had dogs in the past BUT JUST TO SYMPATHIZE WITH THEM SLIGHTLY IN TERMS OF WHAT THIS DOES FOR THEM ALLOWS THEM TO FINALLY HAVE A CHANCE TO RUN OUT FREE AND SPEND SOME OUTSIDE TIME AND REALLY STRETCH YOUR LEGS, WHICH THEY'VE NOT BEEN ABLE TO DO FOR NOW TWO YEARS. SO I THINK THAT KIND OF MENTIONS ALL THE POINTS THERE. CONCLUSIONS, WE'VE KIND OF ALREADY MENTIONED THIS. THIS IS A VERY MINOR REQUEST. WE'RE ASKING FOR ADDITIONAL 12 INCHES ON AN ULTRAUNIQUE PROPERTY THAT HAS NO OTHER PRECEDENTS TO SET IN THE COMMUNITY. Of all the comparable properties that staff could attempt to find, there were zero that even broached or breached the 3% slope. So not only is our property more unique in layout, but the slope is significantly greater than anything else that we were able to find. And just the benefits to our house, benefits to our family, benefits to the neighborhood would be so great for us. And we've gotten such great feedback from all of our neighbors. I know a handful of them or a few of them have mentioned they've sent emails or even showed up in person last time. So I really hope that kind of shows you that we've been working with this. We want to do the best possible option. We'd be very, very, very excited to get this fence approved, and we hope you guys can help us accomplish that.

Thank you.

That's it?

Is there anyone else who would like to testify at the public hearing? Anyone else who would like to testify in the public hearing? Seeing nobody has jumped up, I will close the public hearing.

Mr. Espin, I would like to put it on record that we did receive six emails and the Board of Zoning Appeals members did receive a copy of each of those.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. You're welcome. I guess... My thoughts are this, that the real issue here is that the owners desire a 60-inch fence when a 48-inch fence is what's allowable. The question before us today is what's the rationale, is there rationale to vary the current code and standard? And I heard the applicant bring up two issues. One is that they believe that their lot is unique that necessitates the variance because of the way it's laid out, its slope, its size, its situation. and they desire to the desire they have for the variant seems to be for the benefit of their dogs rather than any other issue that i heard so with that i would those are my comments and i will gladly let folks question or comment mr raider you want to start with us i i would be happy to so um let me ask staff

At one point, there was a reference made that perhaps you might use a better analogy by calling this a triple fronted lot, which clearly it isn't. Correct. But if we assume that for a moment, what would the setbacks be?

If it was triple frontage, it would be the 40 foot front yard setback. It would be the same. For a double frontage lot, we do allow an encroachment of 20 feet. So if it was truly triple frontage, they would have to meet the 40 foot setback. But a double frontage lot, we do allow in our code the 20 foot encroachment into that 40 foot required front yard. And that's why we didn't want to compare them to a triple frontage lot. We understand there is some uniqueness there. If they feel the need to have a five-foot fence, we were willing to accommodate that by allowing that 20-foot encroachment, which would have been typical for a double frontage lot.

Right. So I'm going to ask you the question that the applicants want me to ask you, I'm sure, because it's really at the core of the argument. Hey, if I could put a 48-inch fence all the way around the entire perimeter of my property, what's the big deal about putting a five-foot fence over half of my property? Why is that such a big deal to the city of Beaver Creek and its zoning staff? So how do you respond to that? To you. i'm sorry can you repeat that i'm sorry all right so we we all agree that that in concept here if they wanted a 48 inch fence around the entire perimeter of their of their property sure that would be permissible under the president's icon right right without even the 10 foot setback correct okay so how about this because we've got the dogs got other situations weird lot and thousand things that they say make this distinguishable from other double-sided lots some of which I can dance with some of it I don't think works but if you assume that what's the big deal about having a five-foot fence completely open this will see through it over part of the property why is that a big deal that staff would propose rejecting the application

part of that is just consistency with what our requirements are for in the zoning code you know our zoning code you know requires that that open 40 foot setback on you know on in in the required front yard that 40 foot setback is consistent through all properties in the city of beaver creek uh that's not unique to their property that's all properties um and it's just you know staff has been working uh over the past you know few years to bring any kind of non-conforming property into compliance as far as those setbacks. That's why we've made, you know, we've increased the height in the required front yard from 42 to 48 inches. We've allowed some accommodations for double frontage lots to encroach into that 20 feet. And, you know, we're working towards, you know, bringing, you know, there are a few places still that, you know, have fences taller than 48 inches in the required front yard. And obviously they're allowed to maintain those, you know, currently. you know, when replaced, they'll have to bring those fences into compliance. So our goal is, you know, consistency in the code working towards compliance. And, you know, staff feels to allow someone to encroach, you know, you know, 34 feet into that required front yard with a fence that's taller than 48 inches works directly against what you know as staff you know as a community we've been working towards as far as you know maintaining the you know bringing that into compliance uh bringing you know properties into compliance with that code and you know again if you know we we understand there is some uniqueness to that property and and that's why we were you know willing to you know uh accommodate with the with the 20 foot encroachment you know if they feel like they truly need a um you know five foot fence certainly um you know we there is some uniqueness there and we were certainly willing to accommodate them so the city admits that this is a unique lot There is some uniqueness to that lot, but there's uniqueness to, there's, again, you know, in some of those examples, there are, this is not the only, you know, property with a unique characteristic, some unique characteristics. There's other, it's not typical, but again, it's not completely unique either. There are other properties. I don't know. I didn't go through and evaluate each one with grade. But this isn't the only property in the city of Beaver Creek that's on a short cul-de-sac. Or the only property in the city of Beaver Creek, because of other road frontage, limits the amount of space that they have in their backyard. There are certainly many other examples in the city of Beaver Creek where residents are faced with that same dilemma. And we've made some accommodations to allow, say, double frontage lots to encroach into some of those areas. And certainly, we were willing to extend that to the applicant in this situation as far as giving them more space. I mean, if you look at the blue line, You know, there is more space, obviously, to where the red line was. You know, it basically would incorporate their patio area, all their rear entries. You know, there is other space. The trees and stuff over here, you know, obviously, you know, they may have to trim the backside of the bush or something. But, you know, those are...

But you're saying that there needs to be some accommodation because of the uniqueness of the lot.

Right, but we don't feel the accommodation would be... you know, a 34-foot encroachment. It's not your call, that's ours. No, but our recommendation is that. And here's the area that's in question as far as the bushes and stuff. This is that area here. So that tree right there is approximately 30 feet from the front property line. So basically it would be, you know, kind of cutting across kind of the backside of these bushes right there.

I'm sorry, Mr. Ritter, I did jump in there before you were finished.

If you could, can you go back to one of your photographs that had the exposure from North Emerald, kind of looking straight down that property line? Yeah. It was another version of it. I'd say it was probably in the beginning.

Okay.

It's going backwards now.

This one?

Yes. OK. So if, approximately where the bicycle is, that's where the patio is, right?

Yes, right here. So the fence would come across basically through here. Yes. I mean, yeah, the least amount of slope, it's, you know, I did some looking, I mean, consistently, you know, from the top, from here down, roughly 13.8%. It does slope a little bit less at the bottom. But, you know, what I found looking at some different fence guidance and stuff that, you know, it wasn't a moderate fence, which is 10 to 20%, does not necessarily require a taller fence. Obviously, if you got closer to 20% it may, but... What percent of grade does that require a taller fence? I don't know exactly. It probably depends on the circumstances in some regard. But I imagine anything above a 20%. What I found was fences with moderate slope typically do not require additional height. So obviously, if you got close to the 20%, then I would say the potential need for additional height might be increased. And this, you know, the applicant talked about the 25% fall. I don't see that anywhere in here. Obviously, you can see where there's, you know, some fall back this way. But, you know, I don't, again, I don't know where that would be.

So I have a question, again, about what preceded the, the application here, you had indicated you had met with the applicants. Correct. At some discussion, the proposal that's before us is what they came to you with to get your input, get staff's input.

Right. Yeah, we had a discussion as far as what the city was, what we thought as far as compromise, what would be reasonable. And obviously, the applicant came with his proposal of the six feet tapering to the 10 around the other side. And I shared at this point, we would be willing to support the 20-foot encroachment. And that's kind of where we left it. He was going to get with me the next week. We were going to meet on site. For whatever reason, that didn't happen. And I didn't hear back until I reached out to him and said, hey, if we're going to move forward, we need information. And they provided us their packet. Might have had something to do with child birth. It could have been. I'm not going to hold that against them. That one? Yeah.

Sorry. Where that robot lawnmower is, can you tell me where your proposed fence would go in relation to that?

I'm guessing somewhere down in here. I mean, this here is 40, so about halfway, so somewhere right in here. So if you kind of follow, maybe somewhere down in here. Because that tree is 30 feet. So it would be 10 feet in front of this tree. That tree is roughly 30 feet off from the front property line. So roughly 10 feet in front of that.

OK. On the materials that staff gave us, it did appear that the 40 foot setback literally came to the corner of the house. with 40 foot setback the 20 foot setback that is simply a reference point here that so that you folks understand staff indicated that it would give a favorable recommendation that they thought it would be appropriate right that's all that's happening there but that seems to come to the corner of the patio right yes So if I were to ask you, and forgive me, I got a little bit of glare here. If we're coming off of the patio, how many more feet for the sidewalk would we have to do?

So the patio was roughly going to be 20 feet from the front property line. So roughly 20 feet from the sidewalk. Because it's about in that midpoint. So that 20-foot encroachment is also 20 feet from the front property line.

Right. But this dispensed with the 20-foot setback dispensed with the problems of the applicant. have made reference to about the doors. Right.

Right. Yeah, they would have, you know, basically if they build a fence basically along that, say that blue line, then, you know, they have access to all their rear doors, they have full access to their patio. Obviously, you know, the yard, you know, significantly more access to their yard than if, you know, it was coming across here at the 40 feet. So it does, you know, substantially increase

You know there are some trees and bushes over here, but you know the trees are relatively open underneath so Okay, and I understood at least by inference why staff feels that 20 feet here would be appropriate had it been proposed right because it gives you a position to say this really doesn't set a precedent correct okay, and I want you to explain on the record if you would so that they understand it as well and why that's important to staff that this would not set a precedent if we did it at 20 feet.

Yeah, because it would be, you know, we could, you know, obviously that we don't feel it would set a precedent. There is uniqueness there, and we certainly would acknowledge that. But we feel like it would still be relatively consistent with what the code allows with double frontage lots and stuff. And we don't think that it would, you know, set a precedence in that. And I think it's a defensible position in the fact of, you know, of what they have going on with their yard. But to allow that 20-foot encroachment would be consistent with the other encroachment of a double frontage lot. And certainly with the way the cost act goes around the parcel, one could argue that it probably is somewhat similar to that. And so I think that certainly is a defensible argument and it serves two purposes. It gives the applicant a much significant use of their yard if they wanted a five-foot fence and it allows them the opportunity to have a five-foot fence even though it's not all the way up to where they want it. It certainly gives them, if they feel like they absolutely need a five-foot fence, it gives them the opportunity to do that but still retain a certain, you know, a reasonable percentage of their backyard.

It almost bifurcates their yard. They're at the point of the patio. Doesn't it? Sort of have a rear yard and a side yard. That's... You can't get from one to the other unless you go into the house?

No, you certainly can. Not where? Across the patio. Across the patio. Wow. So, I mean, I don't have a straight-on picture from the back, but, I mean, this is the patio here. So, I mean, obviously you can go around the house, you know, to get, you know, to stay in the yard, essentially.

Thank you. Mr. Roach, anything else?

Yeah, I have no prayer.

Okay, then Ms. Vest, anything? Okay, Ms. Barlow?

Do you have a different question?

Ms. Parade or anything?

No.

I don't think I have anything either, so the chair is willing to accept a motion to either approve or deny. Okay. Well, I think it probably, unless there's some further discussion among the board as to what you'd like to do. But you've heard a presentation from both the city and the public hearing with the applicant. And, Counselor, now it's time for the decision.

I'm going to stand firm with approving the variance. The staff was not able to display similar properties with the same uniqueness. So I do not believe this will set a precedent. Oh, I'm sorry. That's what I'm doing. I'm making a motion. Sorry.

Yes, to approve the variance. Based upon the uniqueness of the lot. Is there a second to that?

A second.

Any further discussion since we have the motion and a second?

By way of discussion, I'll simply say that I believe we could have perhaps had a little more discussion and give and take relative to this. However, that being said, I'm going to come back to the issue that at its core, I don't find that this changes the substance of the neighborhood. I don't find that it is... setting some precedent for future applicants, that everyone is getting a five-foot fence on every two-sided lot, so forth. I'm going to vote in favor of the applicant and see if in the future we can perhaps do a little better in these discussions. Maybe the applicant understands a little better what we were trying to accomplish, but I don't find anything objectionable about it. I'm not going to hold the applicant responsible for where we didn't get to. So I'm in favor.

Any further discussion? Call for a vote, please.

Mr. Rader?

No.

Mr. Roach? Yes. Ms. Vest? Yes. Ms. Barhorst? Yes. Mr. Essman?

Yes. That being said, is there any other business that comes before us tonight? If not, I will accept a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn. So second?

We are adjourned.